Taylor, Taylor-Hobson Cooke Kinic 1-inch f/1.5 ELC Lens

Last week, whilst scrolling through Flickr Explore, I stumbled across an image that had an amazing swirly bokeh. That original image can be found by following this link. I like a good bokeh swirl so, having faved the image, I began to research it. The picture info showed it had been shot with a vintage Taylor, Taylor & Hobson Cooke Kinic 1 Inch f/1.5 ELC lens.

I’d never heard of that lens, despite spending lots of time reading vintage lens blogs whilst researching the old lenses I do own. I soon discovered the main reason for this lens flying under the radar is that it’s an old cine camera lens and there’s not that many of them around. A quick check on Ebay showed a small number for sale but very few of them in the UK. However, there was one that looked good at a reasonable price, so I decided to buy it.

Information in relation to these lenses is scant but I’ve taken the following from one site I found:

Cooke Optics, originally known as Taylor, Taylor & Hobson, is a British lens manufacturer with roots dating back to 1886 in Leicester, England. The company established itself early on as a pioneer in precision optics, and became particularly known for its innovative designs in film and photography lenses. In the early 1900s, they launched the legendary Cooke Series lenses, which were recognized for their sharpness and natural rendering. Their name eventually became synonymous with high quality in the film industry, and the term “the Cooke Look” was used to describe the warm, natural and organic image reproduction their lenses produced. The renowned Cooke Optics has been in business since 1893 and has an exciting and innovative history that you can read more about here. – The original article is here – Manual Fokus

Mine is the later of two versions of the lens and I asked Google AI to try and date it for me from the lens serial number. Google returned this – ‘Based on the official historical charts for Taylor, Taylor & Hobson (TT&H) Cooke lens serial numbers, your lens with serial number 312813 was manufactured in approximately 1945–1946‘.

For a lens that’s 80 yrs old my example is in excellent condition. It was a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be but that said, I have no experience whatsoever with cine camera lenses.

I ordered a K&F C Mount adapter for the lens so that I could use it with my Fujifilm X-T5. It arrived yesterday. I had a problem screwing my lens into the adapter. The thread gripped for about half a turn and then stopped. If I flipped the adapter around I could screw the lens fully into the adapter but on the camera flange side. The conclusion from this is that the lens has a left hand thread. I have tried but I wasn’t able to screw it anti-clockwise into the front of the adapter either.

With the lens attached carefully, so as not to strip the thread on the lens body, by a half turn to the adapter I can use it as a macro lens but there is an issue with focusing the lens to infinity. I think this is a problem with the flange focal distance (yes, I had to look that up), using the adapter without the lens screwed to the end of its thread. I’ll need to research my options in relation to this.

I’m not to bothered about this issue as I really wanted the lens for close bokeh shots anyway. I can focus close up and use the lens like a macro lens. I never intended that this would be a walk-about, street shot lens, but it would be nice to have the option of infinity focus if it’s possible.

I went out into our local woodland yesterday to try and find some swirly bokeh. First impressions are that I’m really impressed with this little lens. It’s surprisingly sharp although I wouldn’t have been to hung up over that. It’s a vintage cine lens after all. At f1.5 the swirly bokeh is quite extreme and the swirl continues out to about f5.6. It also sharpens up a lot at that aperture. The swirl bokeh effect worked best shooting into the light. There is strong vignetting but I was expecting that and I think it adds to the overall effect.

I’m really pleased with my purchase. I need to spend some time with this lens but I really enjoy learning with these old lenses. I certainly achieved the look I had seen on Flickr and wanted to replicate. I see a busy week ahead for my tiny cine lens.

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2026 – All rights reserved.